As always #FFIDP scoring has been a hot topic in recent times.
My own PoV is that whatever you like - you like.
So set your league up anyway you want.
Just have your eyes open and understand what effects the choices you make will actually have.
Here's a #thread on that...

I looked at scoring from 8 leagues for this.
There are hundreds if not thousands of setups.
So this is only a slice of them.
But I'm just trying to illustrate trends and differences - not analyse every league.
The leagues are:

I just used scoring from 2020 for this.
Just out of ease.
Every season the players score differently but curves and hierarchies are very stable over time.
So lets look at scoring curves by position...

Some of these leagues don't differentiate between edge and interior linemen.
I think that's a mistake - but many disagree. So I'll show them combined and split out.

Here's D linemen.
You'll notice that the leagues which do NOT have diff scoring by position [basic, 123 and invitational] score linemen way lower than leagues with premiums for those positions.
Opinions differ and we'll come back to it later - but it IS a major difference

Here's defensive backs.
Again MFL Basic is significantly lower scoring than others.
QRL is set up to have very low individual IDP scoring but a larger number of starters.
NPLB is very high IDP scoring.
Mega def is best-ball [as well as high scoring and high starters].

Here's DT/interior linemen.
Again you see the leagues with non-differentiated scoring being very low here.
In those leagues DTs have minimal impact [aside from star pass rushers like Aaron Donald and Deforest Buckner].
Note in all leagues the top few players are way out in front

Here's DE/edge [some of these are true position leagues].
Again the non-differentiated scoring leagues are very low on these guys.
There's really 4 leagues with high edge scoring and 4 with low here.
You can see the big drop after the top 20 or so DEs.

Here's LB.
This is the closest position. All leagues [bar QRL] are extremely tightly bunched here because scoring is normally "based" on LBs.
So differences are minimal.

Cornerback.
Again you see non-differentiated scoring systems score CBs very low.
I've written extensively about what constitutes "good" CB play and how that should be valued in #FFIDP.
But treating them the same as LBs [and all other positions] is not it in my humble opinion.

And finally safety.
This is slightly different to them theme we've seen.
We see 3 leagues with high S scoring [mega, NPLB and Aussie Guys V].
4 with medium S scoring.
And then MFL BASIC which is consistently low.

OK. All of that is quite interesting - but what does it mean?
Scoring is only half of it.
Number of starters [and total teams] is just as important.
And quite often people ignore that.
Just looking at "how many IDPs are in the top 100 scorers" or the like ignores this totally.

This shows the total league starter points from 2020 by position. As a % obviously.
You can pick out DL/DB and non-Superflex leagues here pretty easily. As well as one league with kickers.

Here's the same data but with DL and DBs combined.
You can see for non-differentiated leagues [Invitational, 123] that LBs are way more important for teams.

Here's offense vs defense [and kicker] points.
All fairly even - we're talking small percentages here.
The concept of making total offense and defense score fairly equally [over a significant period] is pretty basic.
It's just how you get there that's interesting.

So let's look at all 5 IDP positions combined for each league/setting.
I've broken out DL and DB here [using True Position allocations for each player].
This shows you how relatively important each #FFIDP position is to each other.

NPLB.
Linebackers are dominant.
DTs [aside from the top handful of elite ones] are significantly lower.
Interestingly CBs mostly score more than DEs.

IDP invitational.
This is noticeably more disparate.
The difference between positions is huge.
The best linemen score about as much as the 40th best LB.
In real terms this means DeForest Buckner and JPP scored about as much as BJ Goodson and De'Vondre Campbell.

Aussie Guys V.
Corner scoring is quite low here - but this league requires 3 of them to start each week.
The elite LBs are pretty high here. That was TJ Watt and Devin White. Sacks are set a bit high for the position I'd say.

IDP 123.
The same issues as the Invitational here for the same reason - scoring that is not position specific.
This means that linemen are unimportant.
Now this is showing DE+DT whereas both leagues are actually DL leagues but the point remains.

The 100.
This is a deep roster bestball league so bear that in mind.
Although DB and DL scoring is low this league rewards having a deep roster of pass rushers and corners.
Even so, LB scoring is a bit high and DT a bit low.

Mega defense.
To recap this is deep roster, bestball with 15 IDP starters.
It's set up to keep the 5 positions as similar as possible and it does that.

MFL BASIC scoring.
I've got to be honest this is the worst scoring I looked at.
I know it's called BASIC, but it really is.
The same issues with non-differentiated scoring exist here and IDPs are in general pretty much an afterthought

QRL.
This is why I included it.
Safety scoring is super high here. Really interesting given their usage and trends right now in the NFL.
The other 4 positions are bunched up.

You'll have noticed by now the big open secret about IDP scoring:
The curves remain the same.
You can drop or raise scoring for each category but basically this just alters each position compared to others.
It does not fundamentally chance the level of which scoring drops off.

This is super important because it changes scarcity.
If you just look at aligning the top scorer at each position then you end up with a LOAD of high-scoring LBs and Ss, and very few useful DTs and DEs.
This is inescapable [in my opinion].

I've lost count of the number of leagues that claim "balanced" position importance but have a huge imbalance towards the positions which have slower, gradual dropoffs.

You can see it here.
The curves for each position across leagues are very similar - it's only their relationship to the other positions in that given league that really changes.

You can also see the fundamental differences here.
The leagues with non-positional scoring [Invitational, 123 and Basic] are clearly the most 'spread-out'.
They have the largest discrepancy between high-scoring and low-scoring positions.

That does not mean they're bad. They can be balanced.
For example in one of those leagues if you started 2 LBs but 4 corners each week you might expect the same number of points for each position.
Or maybe you just think LBs are fundamentally more important to defenses...

But it goes back to the original premise:
There is no such thing as balance in an #FFIDP league.
There's only choices about where the value and importance is.

If you take anything out of this thread, I hope it's that.
You can alter scoring, starting numbers and bestball.
Those combine to make it interesting.
Not just scoring on it's own.

A thought experiment:
...
In a league with non-differentiated scoring you start 1 DL, 1 LB and 1 DB.
...
You use the same scoring but start 2 LBs, 3 DTs, 3 DEs, 4 CBs and 3 Ss.
...
Same scoring but start 2 DT, 2 DE, 2 LB, 2 CB, 2 S.
...
Totally different 'balance'.

Alright.
That's enough.
Hopefully this was helpful.
Hopefully it was interesting.
Thanks for reading.